Life in the Kuchiki dukedom was seldom peaceful, but it was the dawn of a new age.
The crops were bountiful, the people were well fed, and the local brigands punished to the fullest extent of the law. Everything was as it should be, thanks to the young duke's rise to power.
Beautiful and quiet, he thought.
Too quiet.
One would never think that just the year before last, the bloodiest uprising in their kingdom's history which decimated the population (and its nobles), had occurred. Byakuya's blood boiled as he remembered the grueling battles and carnage he faced, and the most significant loss of his life.
Hisana.
The duke closed his eyes and tried to stop his brain from thinking. But it was too late, like ink in water, she spread in his mind. Her laugh, her cry, her loving smile, and her dying wish.
If he listened hard enough, he could almost hear her breathing as if she was still-
A resounding thud echoed in the room as he slammed his fist onto the desk.
Byakuya, unable to continue his paperwork in the office, silently walked back to his room in the dead of night. Not a maid or mouse to be heard, just how he liked it. As he turned the corner, there was a light shining at the end of the hall, right before his quarters.
The door was slightly ajar, and he peered in.
Soft snoring emanated from the grand bed at the far end of the dimly lit room.
Paying the child no mind, the duke walked over to the candle on the mantle and blew it out. But as the light disappeared, so did the soft snores.
Peace and quiet, he thought. What a beautiful sound.
Then it started to cry. And cry and cry and cry.
It kept crying as Byakuya walked away and out the door and into his own room just a couple paces down. The noise simmered down as he settled into his bed, ready for sleep. He rarely slept in his own beddings, as work piled up for him on the daily, so this was a nice change of pace.
Maybe, it'll even be a dreamless sleep.
Right as he was about to blow out his own candle, a howling erupted in the room next. The child seemed to be even louder now and it was growing hysteric.
What do I even pay for these maids to do!
What was I even thinking of putting it's room adjacent to mine.
I was lucky it managed to keep itself quiet this long.
Infuriated at the noise, he whisked himself away to the room next to his, fully intent on giving it a piece of his mind. Byakuya slammed the door open and made a beeline to his source of irritation.
And he stopped before anything could come out of his mouth.
The child, crying, looked up at him with her big eyes. It bawled, reaching forward, unable to see in the moonlit room.
Is it already afraid of the dark? He scoffed to himself.
A member of the Kuchiki family cannot afford to be scared of something as insignificant as the dark.
As if the small child sensed his presence, it stopped crying. Instead of pawing at the unknown, started to reach for the young duke. It hiccupped as it found his hand on the edge of their bed.
"B-Byakuya-sama!" It stuttered, fear evident in the child's voice.
The kid spouted nonsensical apologies but did not let go of his hand. Byakuya sighed and released himself from its grip. He whispered some words into the air that not even the child could hear.
And like magic, a floating pink light fluttered down from the ceiling.
Byakuya looked down at the little human and reminisced about his late wife's final wish.
"My love," Her voice echoed in his mind. "Please find my sister."
Hisana had begged for him not to be angry at her for keeping her sister's existence a secret. As blood spilled out of her abdomen and tears ran down his face, he held on to her as he begged for her to stay awake.
"My grace, please protect my sister no matter what. I abandoned her, so I don't deserve to be her sister, please take my place instead. Give her a family," Her breath growing ever weaker as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
She held onto him as the clamoring of the siege outside was drowned out by his sorrow. She whispered into his ears her final words and Byakuya wept.
He found her the following month, in the care of an old street urchin who sold her to him for mere pennies. She was small and malnourished, enough to still look like a baby even though she should be around three or four years of age. He wasn't even sure if she would survive the in the castle when she was continuously catching every disease known to man the first few months under his care. There was even a time he was scared he wouldn't be able to keep his promise, when she was ravaged by a strange fever and would not wake up for days.
He looked down at little Rukia, now healthy and plump, and a splitting image of her older sister.
How far she has come, how far she has fought.
His face softened as she looked up in awe at the glowing spheres of light rained down onto her bed.
Before she could utter a word of gratitude, he left the room as fast as he had stormed in. Byakuya decided he could finish today's paperwork after all, and headed back to his office.
The child, left to her own devices in the now once again dimly lit room, sat on the edge of her bed.
"What. The fuck. Was that." Little Rukia muttered in shock as soon as he was out of earshot.
That asshole of a duke would never come into anyone's room to do anything positive. To kill, sure. To torture? Understandable.
She hadn't told anyone of her sleep paralysis episodes, not even her favorite maids. She usually didn't make a sound either to alert anyone what was going on, but maybe she had actually managed to use her real voice finally.
Although, Byakuya being the one to break her trance was not what she imagined.
Rukia could already barely believe that she had been reincarnated into a fantasy novel full of magic, witches, and dragons. But now she had to deal with a character that wasn't acting like how he was written?
Bull crap, she huffed.
And out of all the bodies she could've been born into, a weak sickly side character on the wrong team who dies in the end like an afterthought. She was sure when she had first awoken she was a baby, maybe a toddler. But here she was at six years old, barely reaching the door handle and having night terrors whenever the lights were off.
"The duke is supposed to leave me alone until I come back from boarding school when I'm 18." Rukia muttered to herself.
She hurriedly took out a journal from a nook behind her bedside table and went over the timeline of the hit novel of her past life, "The Black Sun". All the major historical events seemed to be following the correct chain of events but this was new to her.
He doesn't even make an appearance at her debutante ball, much less look at her warmly and perform his literal secret magic power just to comfort her. The first and last act of kindness he was supposed to do was adopt her into the family as his daughter.
Though, the fact that she was adopted was only on a need to know basis.
This behavior from Byakuya, the bloody duke who was said to have sacrificed his own wife to attain the duchy in a power vacuum, was unprecedented. Completely unheard of!
She added a new entry into her secret journal.
The duke is acting out of character, avoiding him at all costs to keep the story on the correct course is the best course of action. Rukia nodded at her brilliant idea.
A perfect plan:
Become extremely rich (independently, whether through nefarious means or not)
Steer clear from the main plot (and character's) path
Maybe live out the rest of her days peacefully as a scholar or maybe even a strawberry farmer (she hadn't thought that part of her plan yet)
If executed well, it would spell out, well, no execution for Rukia as the entire Kuchiki clan is routinely put to death at the end of the novel and everyone lives happily ever after.
A marvelous plan to survive the story as the villainous duke's younger sister!
